Many pharmaceutical manufacturers recommend that their medicines be kept at a temperature of between 2 degrees Celsius and 8 degrees Celsius at all times. Thus, various box systems have been developed to keep medicinal payloads at this temperature range during shipment.
Such prior art systems generally rely on an expensive phase change material to achieve the desired temperature range. For example, commonly, deuterium oxide (heavy water), which has a melting point of about 4 degrees Celsius, or decanol-1, which has a melting point of about 6.4 degrees Celsius, are used as phase change materials in shipping boxes to keep medicines at this temperature range during shipment. However, deuterium oxide and decanol-1 are very expensive.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,257,963 (“the '963 patent”) teaches a system for shipping articles under controlled temperature conditions. As illustrated in FIGS. 3 and 4, the system includes an outside container 100 such as corrugated cardboard. A series of sytrofoam insulated panels 149 line the inside walls of the outside container 100. A plurality of chambers 250 containing ice/water are seated inside the insulated panels 149 and hold the interior temperature at 0 degrees Celsius for so long as it takes to melt and/or freeze the water/ice mixture. A second series of sytrofoam insulated panels 249 are positioned adjacent the interior walls of the chambers 250. Finally, a second phase change material 300, deuterium oxide, is placed inside the second series of insulated panels 249 to create a retention chamber. The payload is placed in the retention chamber. The system described in the '963 patent, however, suffers from at least one very important disadvantage: it is very expensive. According to the '963 patent, the system described therein requires $100 in deuterium oxide alone.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,849,708 (“the '708 patent”) describes a shipping system that uses 0.5 pounds of decanol-1. However, decanol-1 is very expensive. In addition, the systems described in the '708 patent are only for local one-day delivery and are not designed to keep the payload at the desired temperature range beyond a one-day period.
Thus, there is need for shipping systems that are effective in creating a temperature-controlled environment for payloads such as medicines (e.g., pharmaceuticals and biologics) that keep such medicines at a desired range for a prolonged period of time and can be produced and sold at a fraction of the price of the systems currently on the market.